Monthly Archives: October 2015

For the third year in a row, a survey of carriers and drivers has found that Hours of Service rules stand out as the biggest concern facing trucking in the U.S. and Canada.

That’s per the American Transportation Research Institute’s annual list of trucking’s top-ten critical issues, presented here at the American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition.

HOS tops the list again. ATRI said this time around its prominence as a key issue is being driven principally by the “uncertainty surrounding the future of the regulations” as well as “concern over the uncertain future of the current suspension of the [HOS] rules.” By contrast, for the past two years, it was the substantial impact HOS was having on supply chains that kept it ranked first.

“Significant negative impacts on the industry from the 34-hour restart provisions first implemented in July 2013 have been documented by numerous sources,” the report states. “In its own research, ATRI found that 80 percent of motor carriers indicated a loss of productivity directly attributable to the now-suspended rules, and driver pay impacts were estimated to range from $1.6 billion to $3.9 billion annually. Although the restart provisions were suspended by Congress in December 2014, concern over their reinstatement continues pending FMCSA’s release of the results of its second field study.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s “continued challenges with its Compliance, Safety, Accountability program” jumped a slot to take second place this year.